2 Defining Open Educational Resources (OER)
What are Open Educational Resources?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others. (UNESCO Recommendation on OER, 2019)
In some cases, that means you can download a resource and share it with colleagues and students. In other cases, you may be able to download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work. How do you know your options? OER often has a Creative Commons license that tells you how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared, and we’ll explore these licenses in detail in a future chapter called What are Create Commons Licenses? In addition, the Creative Commons Wiki offers more definitions of OER.
An Introduction to Open Educational Resources
The video below provides a brief overview of how the use of OER can benefit our students and courses, how we define OER and open licenses, what types of materials you might use, how to incorporate an OER into your course, where to find OER, and where to get support. Each of these points will be explored more deeply in further chapters of this guidebook.
References
Elder, A. (n.d.). An introduction to open educational resources. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtJmakm1-zc
Paradiso, J. R., & Luken, D. (n.d.). Introduction to open education (Adapted from Parsons, J., OER specialist training manual). Licensed under CC BY SA 4.0.
West Library, Texas Wesleyan University. (n.d.). Open educational resources (OER). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://txwes.libguides.com/oer
